The past several decades have been marked by tremendous growth in the types of window covering materials that are available to purchasers. Starting with roller shades and slatted horizontal blinds, the field of window coverings has blossomed to include a wide array of different types of coverings. These have included pleated shades, Roman shades, cellular shades and many others.
To compound the number of choices available to customers, in each of the aforesaid categories, numerous types of fabric are available, and each type of fabric is often available in a broad range of colors, patterns and the like.
Among these many choices, there are shade materials which are transparent to some degree, as well as shade materials which are much more opaque, keeping out a much greater degree of light and providing a greater degree of privacy than is offered by shade materials that are substantially transparent.
To compound even further the difficulty in choosing among the many offerings available in the marketplace is the advent and increased popularity of double shades. As illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,205,334 in the name of Ren Judkins, double shades provide an opportunity to employ two completely different types of shades mounted together to cover the same window. With such double shades, the user has the ability to deploy only one of the two shades (which may, for example, be a relatively sheer pleated shade), or to only deploy the second shade, which may be a more opaque roller shade, or to deploy both at the same time. Because of the enormous number of possible choices of shade materials, compounded by the number of different sizes that may be needed, double shades are often purchased and manufactured on a custom basis.
A problem that is faced by the buyer is to envision how two different shade materials, which may seem appealing in a sample book or the like, will look on the particular window for which the shade is being purchased. It is often difficult to know whether a shade fabric will coordinate well with the paint or wall covering on the walls near the window, particularly when the shade material may have a different appearance depending on how much sunlight may be entering the room through the window in question.
While this difficulty is a concern with single shades, the difficulty is compounded when a customer is selecting two different shade materials to be used together in a double shade. In those instances, the customer will want to have a preview of how two different shade fabrics will look together as part of the same double shade, in terms of their colors, patterns, and their ability to block or transmit light.
One old—and inadequate—solution is to simply hold samples of the materials up by hand near the window which is to be covered. One drawback to doing this is obvious: one cannot step back more than a couple of feet to see how the shade material will look on the window if one is holding up the sample. The problem is compounded further when one wishes to preview two samples of shade material to be used together in a double shade. In this instance, it would be desirable for both samples to be held near and substantially parallel to the window, and spaced apart from each other by a distance that at least approximates the spacing that will exist when the two shade fabrics are mounted to a double shade.
Accordingly, a need has arisen for an apparatus for displaying samples of window coverings which will allow samples to be readily and releasably mounted to a window to permit the user to preview how the window shade material will appear on that window. In addition, such apparatus should permit two samples of shade material to be suspended, one behind the other, with the samples spaced apart to an extent which approximates the distance by which the two different shade materials will be separated if an when they are later used in a double shade.